Everything Matters. Time Is Precious.

[on The Philippines:] ... Eighty Dialects And Languages Are Spoken; We Are A Fragmented Nation Of Loyal Believers, Divided By Blood Feuds And Controlled By The Church.

I Don't Know What Issues Concerning Identity Have Helped Contemporary Fiction Evolve To What It Is Now. All I Know Is That The Range Of Voices That Are Being Heard And Published Is A Lot More Diverse Than When I Was Coming Up.

It's Not Just Nyu. There Are Days When I Feel Like I'm Stranded In Some Upscale Mall In Pasadena. Don't Even Get Me Started On The Insidious Transformation Of Bleecker Street!

Growing Up In The Philippines, I Loved All Kinds Of Movies. We Had A Very Healthy Film Industry There When I Was A Child. It's Now Gotten Very Limited. They Only Make Action Movies And Hard-core Exploitation Movies. Women Get Raped; Men Get Shot.

My Identity Is Linked To My Grandmother, Who's Pure Filipino, As Pure As You Can Probably Get. And That Shaped My Imagination. So That's How I Identify.